My Future Self and Me

Imagine yourself five years from now. What advice would you give your current self for the year ahead? (Bonus: Write a note to yourself 10 years ago. What would you tell your younger self?)

Hey Past Self,

What’s up? JK, I already know! So remember that South Parkepisode where the boys’ parents hire fake future selves to show the kids how fucked-up it is to do drugs?

This isn’t like that.

I think that you should give up. Seriously. This business of trying to stay on top of everything is pretty crazy. Do you understand that? That if you did everything that you think you should every day, you would have a psychotic episode due to lack of sleep?

Think about it.

There aren’t enough hours in the day to:

Exercise

Watch two movies

Review two movies

Manage an autism blog

Write your own blog

Work on the other projects

Do chores

Make dinner

Hang out with friends/talk to family

Spend time with husband

Snuggle cat friends

Read novels

Say you spent only an hour doing each of these things, with the exception of watching movies (we’ll designate two hours per movie, which will account for travel time in most cases). We can also take some time away from doing chores and snuggling cats and put that toward the random work projects you have going at any given time.

That is sixteen hours of allotted time every day.

You left your job in order to control your own schedule. But back then, only eight hours of your day belonged to somebody else. YOU HAVE INCREASED THIS BY 200 PERCENT. And who is breathing over your shoulder? Who is holding the ideal of The Perfectly Balanced and Productive Life over your head?

Just you.

So stop.

Some days, spend most of your time working. On others, hang out with your friends. Once in a while, devote the entire day to reading books or watching movies. Accept that feeling anxious about lack of balance is the quickest way to become unbalanced. Or unhinged.

And when you do start feeling anxious, please remember that it’s probably because you’ve literally stopped inhaling oxygen into your lungs and not because the world is ending as predicted by the Maya.